C/D Charalambides

For a band that didn't used to tour or play out much at all, Charalambides certainly has been all over the shop this year. Christina and Tom are now apparently divorced? Her wikipedia entry redirects to "Christina Madonia".

They sound like psychedelic drone music with a rock pedigree. Some folk elements, but they're secondary. Electric guitars, dreamy female vocals and organs - other sounds for color, almost no percussion or groove. It's simple music: spare, haunting and nocturnal, but with a rough-hewn, hands-on quality that prevents it from ever getting too "pretty". They go for long, amorphous, drifting whooshes more than discrete songs, and sometimes get quite spooky, even downright creepy, in acid-by-candlelight kinda way. (That's true of most of the catalog, anyway, the new one is def folkier and prettier.)

Of the stuff I've heard, I'm most fond of IN CR EA SE.

their merch table is beginning to rival AMT's. where'd all these early (Tom-Christina-Jason-era) compilations come from?!

still tingling all over from the Zaïmph set. that was a hard act to follow. utterly unreal what Marcia can do with a table full of junk, her voice, and a guitar. she's a force of nature. would have been a hard act for anyone to follow - even the mighty Charalambides.

/drunktalk

Latest update from Tom C:

wholly other will soon be pulling up stakes and leaving california. i've had a blast being here but it's time to move on. i'll be hitting the road for a while and don't know where i'll settle yet, but label operations will continue as usual, via our friends at twilight flight sound in austin TX. i will post a new wholly other address here and on wholly-other.com as soon as plans are finalized.

on that note, there will be a big charalambides US tour in november. a couple of surprises are in the works for this one that will be disclosed in the next update. after that, we're looking at another charalambides european tour in the spring of 08... again, a lot more is pending that will become clear as everything finalizes. stay tuned.

also, from an interview i did with Tom & Christina, about a month ago

Christina Carter: "We have a new album finished and in production. It's called _Likeness_ , and will be out on Kranky on October 29th of this year. It's based around the idea of protest songs and songs of outsiders and folk songs. I took lyrics from songbooks, traditional and public domain stuff, and rearranged and edited the words and put them to the music that Tom and I had recorded. It was all done pretty quickly. The music was recorded in about 5 days and the vocals were overdubbed in one long session. It sounds maybe more on the order of earlier Charalambides with more of a four-track recorder kind of
feel...But the whole point is that it's traditional/folk material that
doesn't sound like we're making a folk album. There's no reverence, trying to recapture a time or a style. We're very much into being in the present...The next album after that, all i can say is it's going to be our 'modern' album; present tense in every way."

I've been listening to Likeness a lot today, it's fucking gorgeous. Anyone else dig?

??????

:-(

i kinda like it... not as much as A Vintage Burden. It is definitely darker than their previous effort, it actually reminds me of the second espers album at times.

it feels a lot like a winter album. my favorites as of now are figs and oranges, saddle up my pony, and what you do for money.